in the latest versions (2.9 and 2.10) the "send test message" button will send you two messages, one in HTML and one in text format. This is so you can check that the messages come out ok in both formats. Eventually when you send your message, your subscribers will only receive one of the two, depending on their preferences.

this took me a minute to get used to, since I wanted to test the new version before sending a mailing, but now I love it. It's great to be able to see how the message will look for users with and without HTML

I just want to thank you for posting this. I was trying to figure out why I was getting 2 test messages and didn't want to burden my members with 2 copies of the same thing. My text version looks like crap however -- now I need to figure out the simple way to have the html and the text versions both look good.

Since release 2.10.3 you can force phplist to send just one test message with this setting in config.php:

# test emails
# if you send a test email, phplist will by default send you two emails, one in HTML format
# and the other in Text format. Since ver. 2.10.3, if you set this to 1, you can override this behaviour
# and only have a test email sent to you that matches the user record of the user that the
# test emails are sent to
define('SEND_ONE_TESTMAIL',1);

It should automatically produce a text version of the HTML message content, based on the text you entered on the 'send a message' content tab. Text entered in the message template will not be included I believe.

If you want to edit the text version of a message separately, you can do so by enabling the 'manual textpart' setting in your config.php file.

I am having a similar problem, tried setting it a default so when members subscribe to the list they get only HTML, but it still sends them two emails(Confirmation, Welcome). Anyone know why this could be?

I might be tempted to override the dual messages despite the convenience of WYSIWYG which is real nice. However, many email systems (eg Gmail) filter out any email with html, tag them and direct them to the recipient's spam folder. Interesting trade-offs.